Rules for Naming Cells and Ranges

*(moderator please see below)

How to name a cell or range of cells (with range name rules).

First highlight the cell or range. Try E2.

Now click inside the “Name” box on your toolbar at the top of your screen. Depending on which version of Excel you are using, it will appear on a different toolbar. But, it will be on the left end and have a downward pointing arrow on its right.

When you click inside this box, you see the cell name (E2) is highlighted and shoots to the left of the box. While it’s highlighted, whatever you type will replace what’s in there, so just type amount then hit your Enter key.

There are some rules about range names:

Names cannot have spaces in them
Names cannot be the same as a cell reference. For example, you could not use the name Q1 for a range starting with any cell except the cell in row 1 of column Q. You could however, name any cell or range as Q1Sales or Q1_sales.
Names cannot begin with a number.
Symbols are not allowed - with the exception of '_' and '.'
The length of a name is limited to 255 characters

If you forget any of these rules and try to name a cell something that Excel will not accept, you will get an error message and will have to change it.


The above info was adapted from http://pubs.logicalexpressions.com/p...cle.asp?id=281 and http://www.msexcel07.com/naming-cells.htm. I hope it is all correct.

*
By the way.

I was searching for info about what constitutes a valid cell name, but my searches yielded this message:

"The following words are either very common, too long, or too short and were not included in your search: name"

... along with results that were off topic.

I'll bet there are posts here which include the info I wanted but which are in effect not searchable because the word "name" is excluded from search terms.

This is a suggestion that "name" might be allowed as a search term to prevent this problem for others.

As you have seen, I found the info I needed elsewhere and I'm including it here in the hope that, if the term "name" is once again allowed, it might help another some day.

Where's the question?